Over the last few decades, digital data communication networks have evolved from simple local area networks that only interconnected computers within an office environment to wide area networks operating on a worldwide scale. Today, the most widely used public data communications network is pejoratively called the “Internet,” although the term is sometimes confused with the Worldwide Web (“Web”), which refers to the set of hyperlinked documents and related resources available over the Internet, as well as other network portals.
The Internet is accessible through numerous wired and wireless network interfaces, the latter of which has undergone significant recent evolution as the capabilities of portable digital data processing and communications devices, such as smart mobile telephones, portable digital assistants, digital media players, and wireless tablet computers, have grown. And with the increased ubiquity of wireless digital data communications, access to an increasingly voluminous compendium of online content, including both traditional textual materials and audio and visual media, has become possible by a larger base of end users.
Video content available online, especially over the Internet, has appealed to an especially wide audience, from individuals to businesses and organizations, due to the breadth of subject matter that can be presented. For example, network and cable television programming and commercial movies are now offered through Web-based services, such as Hulu and Netflix. As well, video-sharing Web sites, such as YouTube and Yahoo! Video, allow end users to freely upload, share, and view video content. Similarly, popular social networking Web sites, such as MySpace and Facebook, tie in with video content sharing and viewing.
In a business environment, online video content has many uses with applicability in wide ranging fields, including e-learning, research, entertainment, corporate knowledge, surveillance, and user-generated content. Web casting, that is, streaming video or audio media delivery to an online viewing or listening audience, and Web conferencing, which transacts many-to-many real time communication, are currently the most popular business applications of online video content. However, video content has recently begun playing an increasingly important role in marketing and advertising, employee and customer training, and internal and external communications.
Nevertheless, despite the breadth of video content subject matter and applicability of use in business and other endeavors, challenges remain. For instance, video, audio, or other forms of multimedia content are only partially “visible” to conventional search engines, which are typically limited to indexing any metadata, such as title or description, that happens to accompany the video content. Similarly, video content is ordinarily treated as a closed box within which end users must manually navigate to find a desired spot. Only high level tables of content, such as found with movie video content, partially facilitate internal navigation, but only to the extent of selecting enumerated chapters, after which the end user must manually navigate through the video content until the desired spot is found. On the same note, current online video content tools lack the convenience of providing ad hoc book marks of individual scenes. Instead, end users must clumsily note the time within the video content that a desired scene appears during playback, after which the time is shared with other users who must manually fast forward their video media players to the time indicated.
Therefore, a need remains for supplementing online media content, particularly video and audio content, with searching and marking features that facilitate searching and browsing through Web search engines and usability and sharing by end users.